USA Newsletter - May

Cobertura : Local

• This title underlines Mary's joint and subordinated action to Christ the Redeemer. 
• Reflection has developed along these lines, particularly since the 15th century. Some feared there might be a desire to put Mary on the same level as Christ. 
• Actually, the Church’s teaching makes a clear distinction between the Mother and the Son in the work of salvation, explaining the Blessed Virgin’s subordination, as co-operator, to the one Redeemer.
• However, applied to Mary, the term “co-operator” acquires a specific meaning
• Mary, instead, co-operated during the event itself and in the role of mother; thus, her co-operation embraces the whole of Christ’s saving work. 
• She alone was associated in this way with the redemptive sacrifice that merited the salvation of all mankind. In union with Christ and in submission to him, she collaborated in obtaining the grace of salvation for all humanity.
• Despite the uniqueness of her condition, Mary is also the recipient of salvation. 
• She is the first to be saved, redeemed by Christ “in the most sublime way” in her Immaculate Conception (cf. Bull Ineffabilis Deus, in Pius IX, Acta, 1, 605) and filled with the grace of the Holy Spirit.
• Mary, the New Eve, thus becomes a perfect icon of the Church. In the divine plan, at the foot of the Cross, she represents redeemed humanity which, in need of salvation, is enabled to make a contribution to the unfolding of the saving work.
• The Council had this doctrine in mind and made it its own, stressing the Blessed Virgin's contribution not only to the Redeemer's birth, but also to the life of his Mystical Body down the ages until the “eschaton”: in the Church Mary “has co-operated” (cf. Lumen gentium, n. 63) and “co-operates” (cf. ibid., n. 53) in the work of salvation.